The Low Road You go your way. I'll go mine.

Maybe I was being melodramatic.

Truth be told, I was already in a foul mood. My morning feast of guinea pig was plotting a mutiny in my lower intestine and I was still reeling from an argument with a 12 year old boy over the price of my bus ticket. He won.

The eternal mosquito heat of the day saw sweat seep from every orifice. Now, on this lost night, the black diesel air feels like an impenetrable soup. Bolivian eyes, wild with insomnia and intrigue, provide the only source of light as each stare pierces my aching skull and cuts a swathe to my gringo soul. The road is trying to kill us. We are bogged.

No surprise. The journey up to now had been hellish. The locals though, seemed downright oblivious that death itself was trying to roll the bus. Instead, they busied themselves with seat-kicking toddlers, card games and clapping to traditional Andean music piped through at tinnitus-inducing volumes. This is third world Bolivia; bad roads rule this country with a dictatorial might. To the locals, bus-swallowing craters are ho hum.

"Todos los hombres fuera del bus para empujar!"

Our driver Raul's commands withered in the heat of protest. It was a moonless 2am, the mosquitoes were on steroids and the tarantula infested jungle dominated in its invisibility. The will for any hombre to go out and push was weak. A sentiment of defeat ricocheted around the age-weary bus.

I for one, was happy to be bogged. Anything to get off the damn thing. My seat reminded me of church; upright and judgemental, punishing me for any sinful thought of comfort. My only breeze, synthetic and filtered by diesel fumes. Even if it meant digging us out with a toothpick, I was getting off. Raul and 3 others followed.

I knelt down to palm the angry road's surface. Her swampy demeanour seemed so breathless, her furrows so riddled with anxiety that for one brief moment I felt sorry for her. Her negative vibe was already influencing me. Her anger had become my anger. Her pain was now my pain. Her battle cry was the most unsettling scream of anguish I had ever heard. And she never made a sound.

It was sunrise before we rescued the bus. We won. Without celebration and back inside, I collapsed on a sack of rice and slept. Eventually, the road ended. At her finish, Rurre, an oasis of eco-tourism and asphalt. We made it!

This was privilege of the highest order. The melodrama of life had produced one more cracking episode. On this road I felt like the last gringo; so alone and so very happy.